At 25 years old, Carlos Perez is one of the younger leaders in the channel, but that doesn't stop him from running a successful and growing cloud services and IT infrastructure management solution provider in Hartford, Conn.

As Systemax, No. 19 on the CRN SP500 list, saw another multimillion loss in its year-end earnings report, it announced in its fourth-quarter earnings call that it would shutter its retail business and significantly cut back on costs across the business.